Reflections from our keynote listeners

During the morning session, our keynote listeners heard from organisations and partnerships who shared their stories of what it takes to make community-led health on the ground.

This is a summary of their initial reflections which they shared with our delegates.

Our listeners:

Professor Linda Bauld 
Professor Linda Bauld OBE is the Bruce and John Usher Chair in Public Health in the Usher Institute, College of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh and Chief Social Policy Adviser to the Scottish Government. 

Ruth Glassborrow 
As Director of Population Health and Wellbeing at Public Health Scotland, Ruth provides strategic leadership for the translation of public health data, evidence, intelligence and knowledge into effective improvements in policy and practice with a focus on getting upstream and addressing the wider determinants of health and wellbeing. 

Rachel Baker 
Rachel is Director of the Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health and Professor of Health Economics at Glasgow Caledonian University.  She leads the Common Health Assets project, in which CHEX is a partner.

Linda’s reflections

Based on the conversations she heard, Linda recognised that despite the current fiscal environment not enough progress is being made around fair funding and said she would be picking this up with colleagues. Linda said that one take-away action for her was to work towards developing more sustainable funding which, she said, is difficult, but something we mustn’t give up on. 

Linda also said she was going to feed in what she’d heard today into a community's communication strategy that is being developed as part of the Scottish Government’s Place and Well-being Programme. She was thinking about this in relation to the value of the community sector and everything she’d heard in the morning’s discussions. 

She noted that a lot of discussions focused on volunteering, including the decrease in volunteering that has been reported. Linda acknowledged the value of volunteers along with the enthusiasm and commitment they have. 

Linda added she had learned about data driven approaches, from large scale studies to small scale evaluation at a local or project level, with both qualitative and quantitative data being valuable. As Chair of a group for “The Promise” on data and evidence which has identified data gaps, particularly around care experience, Linda said she was going to follow up with some really good examples she’d heard from at the conference. 

For Linda, the importance of arts and culture came through loud and clear, and she was particularly impressed by Media Education’s approach to this, as well as their emphasis on qualifications. 

Linda highlighted the diversity within the stories and reflections of the world café and said this was something we had to hold on to. Additionally, the importance of starting early, focusing on Scotland’s young people, was something Linda felt she’d learned more about. Relatedly, Linda emphasised that, in addition to valuing and promoting diversity, we have to also think about disenfranchised groups that we don’t always consider, such as young men in Scotland’s poorest communities.   

Ruth’s reflections

Listening to the conversations, Ruth had felt an overwhelming sense of the potential people in the room and their wider communities have to make a difference.  

She heard practical examples of the difference that having long-term sustainable funding made to doing meaningful work. She also heard the challenge many in the community sector are walking in terms of taking a can-do, solution-focused, asset-based approach whilst recognizing that there is so much that happens in the wider environment that impacts negatively on people’s lives.  

Relatedly, Ruth picked up on the frustration she shares at how national and/or global decisions can impact negatively on individuals’ lives. She recognized the way policy and legislative decisions so often re-reinforce existing inequities and the missed opportunities to create a more equitable society if there was the will to do things differently. 

Another thing Ruth had learned from the discussions was the importance of creating spaces where people feel safe to share what really matters to them, rather than constrained to just talk about the things the decision makers are interested in. 

Something which had been reinforced for Ruth was that if we're going to see the changes we all want to see in Scotland in terms of tackling inequalities in health, it’s going to take a combination of the bottom up, community empowered work that you're all involved with and the top down change in terms of things like legislation and welfare benefits. There also needs to be better alignment between policy and decisions at a national level and the community-led approaches being taken forward in communities. 

One of the things Ruth is going to do is commit to sharing back some of her thoughts and reflections, as well as having further discussion internally within her organisation. Some specific connections she wants to make include with the Common Health Assets work in order to make a better case for preventative work and also in Dundee in terms of some of the work being done on measurement.  

The importance of progressing work to break down ‘othering’ particularly with the challenges of social media was also something Ruth was keen to address going forward. 

Rachel’s reflections

Rachel’s first take-away point was around the foundations, and she had observed from the conversations that a lot of what makes strong foundations is people, especially in terms of community voice, partnership and collaborative working.  The use of a Jenga tower to stimulate discussion in the Castlemilk Youth Complex was a good symbol of the importance of foundations.  Community-led health, she added, has really strong roots and foundations, but it can’t survive anything. For Rachel, people can still make change happen in communities in the face of cuts and challenges but it needs to be recognised that everyone and every organisation has a breaking point.  

Her second learning point was around data, and she commented that people caring about data was music to her ears as a researcher. She was particularly pleased to hear how data was being used in a range of incredible ways. For instance, at the table talking about the Dundee experience, logic models and systems maps, which may sound very dry, can be used to incredible effects, when used together with the relationships and community innovation and the commitment to community involvement that was being described in Dundee. This, she added, was making her think about logic models a little bit differently - how might they be used in a partnership, in communication and in action. The importance of measuring what matters was also something Rachel picked up on. If the indicators used are measuring changes life expectancy, how are we ever going to show impact on indicators within any kind of funding period. Alternatively, can we bring indicators down to something that is measurable, that matters, and can we involve communities in measuring what matters? 

Rachel’s last learning reflection was around creativity, and she noted Leanne’s poem in particular, which said more in a few minutes than a long report could ever do. She added that photojournalism and drama had also been used by Chance to Change and that these were also powerful approaches. Rachel was struck by the level of innovation in communities to ensure people’s priorities and needs are met, including around food provision. 

Rachel will be reflecting on and talking with colleagues about research and policy jargon or ‘jaggy words’ and exploring different ways of working with logic models and system maps.  Presenting research findings from CommonHealth Assets to a gathering which such rich insights and having conversations afterwards affects our interpretations of our research findings and how they might be employed or used to greatest impact.